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Jan 12, 1580
Birth of Jean-Baptiste van Helmont (Abiogenesis)
Born in Brussles, Belgium -
Birth of Francesco Redi (Biogenesis)
Born in Arezzo, Italy -
Jean-Baptiste van Helmont - Recipe for mice
Place a dirty shirt or some rags in an open pot or barrel containing a few grains of wheat or some wheat bran, and in 21 days, mice will appear. There will be adult males and females present, and they will be capable of mating and reproducing more mice. -
Death of Jean-Baptiste van Helmont
Died in Vilvoorde, Belgium -
Francesco Redi - Experiment on the generation of insects
Filled containers with dead meat of animals, and left open so that flies could come. Then he closed off the containers to show that the flies come from another source. People argued that this was not a fair experiement because there was no air getting into the containers, so he did one more with mesh over the containers. There were still no flies. -
Death of Francesco
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Birth of John Needham (Abiogenesis)
Born in England -
Birth of Lazzaro Spallanzani (Biogenesis)
Born in Scandiano, Italy -
John Needham - Showed there is a lifeforce that causes spontaneous generation
Experimented by briefly boiling broth, letting it cool in an open container at room temperature, then covering it. Once he covered it, and left it to sit for a while, there were microbes thar grew. It is now known that he did not boil it long enough, and that by leaving it sit open, spores from the microbes were abel to sit into the broth, but at the time he thought this proved that there is a life-force that causes spontaneous generation. Spallanzani later improved and performed his experiments -
Lazzaro Spallanzani - Defeated the theory of spontaneous generation of microbes
There was already a theory in place, stating that there is a life-generating force inherent to certain kinds of inorganic matter that causes living microbes to create themselves if given sufficient time. Spallanzani did not agree with this, so he took the "inorganic material" and boiled it for an hour. When the microbes did not reappear after he sealed the boiled material, he proposed that the microbes float in the air and can be killed through boiling. This paved the way for Pasteurs experiment -
Death of John Needham
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Death of Lazzaro Spallanzani
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Birth of Louis Pasteur (Biogenesis)
Born in Dole, Jura, France -
Louis Pasteur - Relationship between germs and bacteria
Proved that frmentation and growth of microorganisms in nutrients were not a result of spontaneous generation. He did so by having containers filled with broth, and convered so that microorganisms could not get into them. When nothing grew in them, he proved that bacteria and germs must come from spores and other outside things, rather than within the broth. -
Death of Louis Pasteur